Fresh debut album by singer/songwriter Kamal Siegel

Kamal Siegel, a singer/songwriter born in Chile and currently residing in the U.S., has just released his debut album titled First Steps. With styles ranging from classical guitar to new age, jazz, flamenco, folk and rock, it features eight songs in English and Spanish and six instrumental pieces. The album was recorded by Faro Producciones, a Chilean Bahá’í-inspired record label Born in Punta Arenas, one of the southernmost cities in the world, Kamal grew up in various parts of the country. Although his world centered on drawing and painting for many years, his artistic interests began to expand at the age of 15 when he picked up his father's guitar. Filling his life afresh with music he discovered that through writing music, art could have a meaningful message. He began to teach himself how to play classical style guitar by learning musical pieces by ear. Unaware that the instrumental works he studied had multiple guitar tracks, he managed to learn and play them on one guitar by experimenting with alternate tuning By exploring these subtleties of classical guitar, his music writing began expanding on themes that go beyond today's trends, such as spiritual tension, racial unity, true happiness, oppression, inner conflicts and various other issues unaddressed in today's music industry. His music, though at times heavy, also finds expression in light, fun and joyful themes of rebirth and spiritual glee. Kamal, how did your album First Steps come to be? During the summer of 1996, Javier Duhart, owner of Faro Producciones, and I were both attending a Bahá’í youth conference in Labranza, Chile. It was at this time that he approached me and asked if I’d be willing to record a couple of pieces for an album he was putting together called Nuevos Horizontes Vol. 1. The album would highlight music by various Latin-American Bahá’í musicians and celebrate diversity. I agreed with excitement as I had never been in a studio before, or recorded my own music. Because the conference we were attending took place on the premises of the Bahá’í Radio Station (one of only seven in the world), we took advantage of using their facilities and laid down tracks for Primavera en Africa (African Spring) and Amar Sin Ser Amado (Unrequited Love). Only the former made it into the album. Though the intent of recording these tracks wasn’t to be part of my own debut album, it was a ”first step” to completing the rest of the album. In 1998, one week before leaving Chile (my home country) and moving to the U.S., I traveled up north to Santiago and visited Faro’s studio. We spent three days recording twelve original compositions, nine of which made it into the final album. Three years later while visiting Chile I returned to Faro and finished the remaining recordings, where I recorded five new tracks giving us a total of fourteen to include on the CD. All the songs are based around my acoustic guitar, but I also added vocals, bass and percussion on some of them. Javier contributed bass, electric guitar, drums, percussion and keyboards on many of the tracks too. Tell us a little about the songs on your album. How did they originate and what are they about? I believe creativity is a natural impulse found in all of existence and takes center stage in humanity. This pulse I feel, originates from the creative unknowable spirit (God, Allah, Jehovah, Dios, Great Spirit, Qi, the Omnipresent, etc) and finds its way through all of us. We all have creative energy flowing out of us; each person simply channels it differently. For me the arts have always been a way for channeling that creativity. The visual arts were a way of expressing imagination whereas music expressed emotions. The album starts out with six instrumental pieces. The first one is Bird & Tree, which I wrote for an animated short film I’m currently working on. I started working on this film in 2000 with a friend and mentor of mine, Abbott Smith. I approached Abbott and pitched a story idea, asking if he’d be willing to art direct the project. He agreed and in the process of this new formed collaboration, he made some beautiful modifications to the story which ended up bearing great resemblance to the story of the Báb and Anis. Consequently, this story became something that really touched my heart and inspired this piece of music which is the latest and my favorite composition on the album. I still hope to some day complete the animation and accompany it with this music. Then comes Primavera en Africa which is a playful tune that was originally meant to be a study and therefore was mostly improvised during the recording session in 1996. In essence, Primavera en Africa is purely simple, filled with natural joy, happiness and contentment which I think makes it one of the most uplifting pieces on the album. As well as playing two acoustic guitars on this piece, I also had some fun adding congas, cabasa, vibraslap and bar chimes. Story of Us is an instrumental piece I wrote a week after falling in love with my wife, Mariya Lincoln. It expresses my love for her and the excitement I had and have for the fruits that our relationship would bear. I wasn’t only trying to express what I felt at the moment but what I saw coming about in the future. To this day, I still feel the same way. The nice thing is that on this song I am accompanied by Mariya playing flute. She also plays flute on Bird & Tree. Then follows another instrumental song called Cascada (Waterfall) which began as a study inspired by my fascination with the harp. I love the cascading effect the harp can make and thought I’d try to do the same with the guitar. In order to do this I developed a finger picking pattern I call “triccolo” that involves using three fingers and trickles its way down the neck of the guitar. I developed the study further into a full composition. It took me a year to complete, so the emotional influences included all those things we go through in high school (inner tension, unrequited love, rambunctious hormones, crisis of faith, etc). The next song, Mixed Feelings, was written soon after moving to the U.S. in 1998. I was attending a multi-faith devotional meeting at a cozy facility in Corvallis, Oregon. Experiencing the prayers that morning was somehow really soothing and afterwards, during the break, while people were having refreshments, I picked up my guitar and played this tune. It just sort of came out, as if my hands had a mind of their own. It was a real special moment. The song is performed on one guitar but with percussive elements in the fingering, both on the strings and also through occasional knocks on the wood. One of the hardest things to accomplish was adding harmonics to the already vigorous rhythm. The last instrumental piece is called Escape and I wrote it when I was 16. It’s the oldest piece on the album, though not the first one I wrote. It manifests my feelings at the time: fear, wanting to run away, confusion, inner chaos, etc. I played this piece over and over again during those years. It was very therapeutic and allowed me to get out some of that tension that was constantly lingering inside of me. Mezcla los Colores (Mix the Colors) started with a short guitar progression I wrote inspired by the birth of my nephew Kalim. I was at a summer retreat in Talca (Chile) at the time I got the news. For years I enjoyed playing this progression over and over again, but it never became a full composition until I met Gustavo Leguizamon. We met sometime in 1999 in Seattle, Washington and became friends instantly. One day when we were hanging out in his apartment he showed me a poem he wrote in Spanish and I immediately asked him if I could put it to music. Right there, in his living room, I took the lyrics, started playing this guitar progression and in a matter of minutes, the song was done. Bam! Just like that. I remember seeing the look on his face with a twinkle in his eye and a smile. The sun was shining through his large east facing living room window. It was a great day. The Sun will Rise was the first piece I wrote after moving to the U.S. in 1998. I was having lots of mixed feelings, strange dreams and thoughts that had me dizzy. It was like having an emotional vertigo. I was missing my friends and life in Chile but at the same time excited about what lay ahead. The first airport I landed in was Dallas and I was immediately struck by the racial diversity. It was beautiful! I was so incredibly happy. Soon I arrived to my destination, Philomath, Oregon, which was quite a contrast. But it was in this small and quiet town that my thoughts started to spin. I channeled that energy into this song and complemented it with some of my Bahá’í views on life. So each song has quite its own story behind it. How about The Book of Life and Happy Man? Gosh, for some reason I have absolutely no recollection of how The Book of Life came about. I think it was similar to Primavera en Africa, where I was simply doodling with the guitar and started blurting out lyrics. But Happy Man originates from a pastel painting I made called Atisbo (Gaze) that was pinned on my bedroom wall. The image is a portrait of an alien that has a very stern look on his face. His eyes stare directly at the viewer. I was sitting on my bed with my guitar staring right at it and I got lost in it. It was as if I was hypnotized. Kind of like daydreaming except I never stopped seeing the painting right on front of me. It simply stared right back at me. A few minutes later I came to my senses and chuckled at myself and at the painting and started playing a typical blues progression. I started with lyrics that were descriptive of the painting like “Angry man looking right at my face”. I remember trying to mock the painting as a way of defying it. Some time in the midst of singing, I decided to reverse the lyrics and sing “Happy man with a grin on his face”. As I continued to develop the piece throughout the week, I would constantly look at the painting, not so much as my nemesis but as my companion. I figured the best way to defy someone’s anger is to find the joy lying hidden behind it. But on the verses there is a second concept that has to do with the coming of the Thief in the Night; a well known prophecy found in the New Testament that talks about the return of “The Christ”. The prophecy says: 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. ~ King James Bible, 2 Peter On the recording, Javier’s brother, Felipe Duhart, played some solos on electric guitar, further enhancing the blues style and mood of the song. The next song, Falling Towards the Sky, has an interesting story behind it. I remember sitting in the back seat of my parents’ car. It was raining and I was staring at the drops that fell on the window. What was interesting was that they were going upwards. Clearly due to the car’s momentum, but fascinating to watch nonetheless. In that moment I thought about how different the world was depending on the way one looked at things. Up is down when you’re upside down, for example. So I poured these thoughts into this song where I talk about the reasoning behind people that choose not to follow faith and choose to live an agnostic life. I realized that for an agnostic, the idea of joining a religion was like going to hell, whereas it’s quite the reverse for a person of faith. That’s why the song says “You say you’ll fall towards the sky with a duned sky above”. This song is all about perspective and how some of us need to have a 180 degree flip; otherwise we’ll become self-absorbed beings leaving nothing behind but our dead bodies. I’ve always liked flamenco and so when I learned the basic scales and chord progressions I doodled up the following piece called Clap Those Hands. It talks about the rush to become proximate to God. I describe it in this song as “running towards the sun”, imagining a sunset. I talk about clapping hands and clapping feet on the ground because I envisioned a puma (Chilean mountain lion), representing man, running over hills and valleys towards the sun. The “rushing” aspect is there because one of the Bahá’í beliefs is: “Free thyself from the fetters of this world, and loose thy soul from the prison of self. Seize thy chance, for it will come to thee no more”. ~ Baha’u’llah Seize the moment! That’s what this piece is about. Our life is short and we should take advantage of every breath. Broken Winged Bird has to do with a girl I met in my senior year of high school in Chile that I was quite taken by and being the tragic-romantic that I was I fell in love. Soon after, I found out that she tried to take her life but failed to do so, though not unharmed. I was so incredibly sad by this news and had no way of reaching her that I grabbed my guitar and poured this song and my tears into it. The album ends with a more rockish song called Viajando (Traveling). I can’t think of anything specific that inspired this song, but it draws heavily from the influences of the Bahá’í teachings and specifically talks about the unity of mankind, a unity in diversity, where the only race is the human race. It’s the only piece I’ve ever written in both languages (English and Spanish). I felt the meaning of the song was too important for people not to be able to understand it. What is your source of inspiration? Heh! Well, I think the previous question pretty much covers it. But to sum it up, here’s the way I think inspiration works: God => Life => Senses => Imagination => Understanding / Interpretation => and finally Expression. Is there any message you are trying to communicate through your music? Most of the time, my music is a manifestation of my inner condition but when I do have a message, it’s usually about justice, unity, freedom from prejudice, harmony, universal brotherhood, eternal life, etc. These are all concepts that I draw from the writings of the Bahá’í Faith. Why is your music bilingual? I was born in Chile but my parents are from the U.S. So I was raised in an American household but in a Chilean country. Spanish and English were my “mother tongues”, so to speak, and I would constantly mix the two on a daily basis. I loved them both so I had no reservations to using both indiscriminately. The great benefit, though, of knowing two languages is that some things are better expressed in one and not the other. This gave me more flexibility when it came to writing lyrics. You are also a graphic artist; is there any connection between this and your music? It’s almost as if I exercise the same “muscle” when doing visual art and music. For me all the arts have always been connected. I think it goes back to that “Creative Spirit” I was talking about earlier. The source is the same; it’s just a different manifestation. What are your future plans? To continue expressing myself creatively. It’s that simple. Kamal’s album First Steps is available on www.kamalsmusic.com as a CD or a digital download via distributors such as CdBaby, DivineNotes, EBILA and the Bahá'í Distribution Service. Sound samples and more information are also available on the website. Kamal currently resides in Seattle where he works as a graphic artist. He also performs regularly at Bahá'í events in the Seattle area.